Mortal Coils
by Skye City
Summary: ((One Shot)) John is left unhinged after the fall. He is a cocoon of what could have been. He is broken glass. Tread carefully, there is a mentioning of suicidal thoughts ahead. I may continue this, should I feel the urge or should someone convince me. I need to stop acting so high and mighty, feel free to tell me what you think.
1. Chapter 1

**(A/N) I do not own Sherlock or anything to do with it. This is my first fic, but don't hold back if you see any problems or you think I should do something different.**

In a hundred lifetimes

In a hundred worlds

In any version of reality

I'd find you

And I'd choose you

My heart dropped with him.

I'll never forget that sensation for as long as I dare to live.

I say dare, because I don't want to venture further into this hellish warped world that is life if he isn't by my side every step of the way.

What warning signs did I miss?

How was I supposed to know he wanted to die?

And as I unfurl on his battered old armchair, suddenly feeling so _old_, I wonder if anyone knows that I do. Or at least that the thought of joining him, in whatever lies beyond the mortal border, passes through my mind every day because it feels so_ right. _Slipping seamlessly into this dimension to the next. A fly hurtling into the cobweb because it feels as though it should; it is its fate to suffocate in those whispery tendrils.

An unholy noise brings me back to Earth with a crack, and I wince at my own choice of words. I glance around the weary old flat, eyes pricked for the source of such an inhuman noise. Then I realise it was me, and swallow the sharp lump in my throat in a bid to stop myself from doing it again.

I have been sitting here for a good few days, only short breaks to eat; I sleep and breathe and cry here – if I have the energy to sob, rising my shoulder seems to hurt much more than it should – it's become almost like my recluse. The hustle of the London backdrop seems to fade here; you are alone with your mind. This could have various degrees of helpfulness. Sometimes, I relive the laughs we had and the things he said. But other times, it's that day – the day two people died, because both of us died that day – when he phoned me and everything changed.

He was there, before me. Screaming for help yet his voice was so …_ soft. _

I would tear down London just to hold him in my arms one more time. I would scream until my vocal chords snapped, I would take 100 silver bullets, I would –

"John?" A timid voice asks, my eyes light up – they have been dead for weeks – and look over my shoulder. Mrs Hudson, my ex landlady, is holding a tea tray in her aging hands – the china on it rattling only slightly. She gives me a look of sympathy, concern which is so mothering I feel like choking,

"You've been up here for a while now." She informs me quietly, placing the tray down on the wooden table, which has long since been emptied of most of his paperwork, and straightens up slowly. I muster a smile, which falls at the first hurdle and quickly withers,

"M'sorry," I mumble, my lips slow to part and form words, everything feels so numb – my lips belong against his and not trying to convince people it's okay. She doesn't smile back, she just kind of lingers, and I guess she's not leaving until I drink some tea.

It's bland and seems to rub grit into my throat, but I swallow a few sips – like a child eating the bare minimum of his vegetables – and place the cup back down. It's not the same, Mrs Hudson mothering me when really she should be doing it to both of us. I want to tell her this, but my heart, lips and mind aren't working in alliance anymore. The communication has just gone.

Yet Mrs Hudson still does not leave, and the look on her face – one of calculation – tells me we are about to approach a sensitive topic.

"It's been seven months, John." She tells me, "Are you planning on moving out?" She doesn't speak as though she's telling me to leave, in fact quite the opposite, as though she wants to keep me here forever, but it sounds like she knows that the longer I stay here the more of a threat I become to myself.

"I'll stay-" I clear my throat, my voice sounds alien, "I'll stay here, thanks." My gaze returning to the worn out patch of floor before my outstretched legs. It seems as though I'm brushing her off, but I'm not – not intentionally. My lungs draw in the air, and expel it, and repeat. Like clockwork, it's been programmed to function – yet there is a cog missing now and it's not quite right. I'm a half-finished machine and he is the mad scientist who gave up. The puppet that snipped his own strings and flopped, the snake that bit itself and allowed its own poison to fill its blood stream.

_Why?_

I was still by his side, and he could've confided anything in me and I would've stayed there – except I would've taken his hand and told him how splendid I thought he was. He could've, should've and maybe if we had had more time he would have told me what was wrong and I know that I would have done everything in my power to make it right for him. I would've sacrificed all of my light to get rid of his shadows, and I would've bled all my joy to eliminate his sadness.

But he has drained me.

Body and soul he has drained me to my last drop of existence.

I am nothing.

As I said,

I am incomplete.

Perhaps nothing will ever fill that all empowering void, that vacuum, that is him.

Sherlock Holmes.

The man to whom I owe so much,

And who owes me an apology

_I'm sorry, John. But I'm home now. _

That is all I ask.

But those words will never be delivered, at least not from those Cupid 's bow lips. I'll never see those words form, never sense the sentence being born inside that brilliant mind. I'll never hear his apology; and in turn he'll never hear my cries. When I wake up, pleading with him not to jump and telling him _I need him._

Telling him it's perfectly fine if he needs me back.

And equally fine if he doesn't but he needs to tell me why he's up there anyway.

His army, albeit a small one, had crumbled and had morphed into a begrudging disbelief, whispering Sir Boastalot – and then screaming it as he fell like a mantra. A horrible, sick and twisted chorus and volley of hate that drove a man to suicide.

Suddenly irritated at my silence, Mrs Hudson coughs lightly to bring me back from my mind – and I am thankful.

"It's not healthy, I'm just trying to look out for you." She murmurs, her voice soft and sweet. I barely have enough care to look in her direction, but I wrench my heart from it's lonely socket and try. I try because I must.

Would he be feeling this way; if this had been reversed? Had felt wretched and empty enough to find comfort in death? Had I been in a mad rush to greet the reaper in such a fashion? Had I made him my audience?

I don't know.

Perhaps I never will.

And these mortal coils are burning.

Because we should have owned forever.

Our sand-turner should never have run out.

Our minutes, our seconds and our heart beats should have merged – and we should've been one.

But he was smashed,

And so was I.

**(A/N) I don't want to sound needy, but I'd love any review and/or constructive criticism. If this goes down well maybe I should do a reunion … But for now I'll bury myself in blankets and hope that one of you review.**

**All my love **


	2. Chapter 2

How long will I love you?  
As long as the stars are above you,  
And longer if I can

There's a tightening, twisting sensation in my chest. Filling the chambers of my world weary heart with an unbelievable fire; a feeling grief so acidic and electric I want to cut myself open and rip it out. I pray that this is a milky, slurred illusion - that he is really stood before me and not this mirror image. The tendons in my shoulders, the base of my neck and my throat roar for their release - the muscles are bunched up with fright. I make a feeble attempt at swallowing, but it it hurts so much when the walls of my throat meet and it sounds as though a bomb has detonated in my throat. A cough that inches on the border of being a scream of pain. I realise my eyes must be stretched so wide they are bug-like in appearance, but they are frozen. Trapped in an expression of utter disbelief as the man before me speaks,

_"John."_

My lungs spontaneously combust as tears dribble down my face. His voice, it's him. A voice so calm and yet it explodes like a firework inside my mind, scorching every fibre and brain cell into oblivion. I can't comprehend anything apart from the mirage, the sweet and glorious figment standing before me. Swathed in that navy blue coat, no blood stain in sight, and porcelain face so steady and expression so sage it may as well be the bust of an ancient Greek philosopher. It's as though my mind, and my emotions, have gone into free-fall and I can hear them crash and splinter so loudly around my stiffened body.

_Dare I believe this to be true?_

My eyes scan him, every mark, every detail and fleck and it is so real. All understanding I have of the real world melts as I descend into this odd feeling of emptiness. He is dead. I saw him drop. I watched him break like a china doll on the pavement; his bones and my heart breaking in unison. This is a flicker of him. A shiver in time, my mind brushing the dust off an old memory before torturing me so mercilessly with it. My rib cage suddenly doesn't fit me chest and everything is constricted - the fall emptied me and suddenly I've been filled back up. I'm doing millions of years of adaptation in a single, wavering heartbeat.

Fingers encase my upper arms in a steely grip as the strength in my knees evaporates, I cascade downwards like the tears I shed for all those hours. I am like a building being demolished, a tsunami as it pounds into the land for the first time - an ancient oak crumbling under the weight of all it has seen. And he is the strike of lightening that illuminates everything - turning it into my favourite shade of pure white.  
His breath is polluted with nicotine and I feel it swimming into my head, my eyes clench shut - they do not want to bear witness to what is before them. My mind rolls like the muscles on a race horse as it gallops; every sense on hyper alert. The carpet transforms into an ocean and I am under the surface.

_"John."  
_  
_"Look at me."_

_"Please."_

His voice. Everything is dark but his voice is a halo of light and I rocket out of the depths of sub consciousness, but that costs me all my energy and still my eyes refuse to open. My pupils, the only part of my body that represented the black chasm I was abandoned in, kick and scream. They need to be filled with him. They are reaching for the light. Heliotropism is occurring, I can feel it erupting across my skin. And I open my eyes and at once his beauty consumes me. Everything suddenly releases as though he flicked the off button. I drop into shut down with a feeling of nausea in the pit of my stomach. I blink, clearing my eyes of the brightness - the sheer volume of light - that is him.

Sherlock.

My lips fall apart and then tug into the smallest of smiles, the ligaments on my face aching slightly because they are so unused to performing such a gesture. Everything flickers, the haze clears and we are alone together. His warmth is enveloping me; I am tangled in his infra-red but yet I don't want to imagine being tangled anywhere else other than him. His face curves upwards into a blistering, crinkles-in-the-corners-of-his-eyes grin.

Even in death, he was supported by me. Even when he was on the brink of oblivion I was there. I was the only one who stood for him and by him and with him as his normality spiralled downwards. And he knows that. And in the pit of his eyes, a window to the core of his soul, I can tell he loves me for that as well. Everything is slow. So achingly slow. So painfully mesmerising.

We are the ice melting.

The leaves turning orange.

The pages in a book yellowing.

We are the stories being born in the minds of authors.

Our eyes, tear stained and battle weary, lock together effortlessly. There is a feeling like liquid static jumping through my veins - I didn't realise I could love a feeling quite as much as I do now - and everything seems to switch gear. Our instincts, buried beneath our pain, guide us to laughter. It is joyous. It is relieved. It is beautiful. It's channeling our bond straight to our hearts, and our friendship is folding in on itself like a nebula star - our own super nova - and changing into something so much more.

It's all going to be very different from now on, my mind informs me in a single impulse. Every crease and fold on his face from his smile, the dip in his face beneath each cheekbone, the sparks of colour in his eyes, his tears are puddles that refuse to dry but also refuse to fall.

The embrace that follows is worth every litre of salt water I lost.

Every slow second that clawed by.

Each fleck of dust that formed on my mind in his absence.

Every note I hit screaming his name in the middle of the night.

Every flashback.

Every lingering regret of what could've been.

Because now, it's what _will _be.

Our sand timer is refilled.

Forever is ours.

He is soothing the burns of my mortal coils.


End file.
